Wireless telecommunications systems, particularly cellular telephone communications systems, employ strategically placed base stations having transceivers that receive and transmit signals over a carrier frequency band to provide wireless communications between two parties. Recent mobile communication standards have lead to a plurality of different modulation standards being in use within a geographic region. Wireless communication providers have had to adapt their network hardware to accommodate unique protocols associated with each modulation standard. Some modulation standards that wireless communication networks currently operate with include, but are not limited to, Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), code division multiple access (CDMA), Wide-band CDMA (WCDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN), and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).
Current communication systems typically have dedicated hardware for each standard which results in idle resources at times when network demand for a particular standard is low. Moreover, typical base stations have limited resources dedicated to specific frequencies, bandwidths, and amplitudes for particular protocols. These resources communicate with remote units that are operating with the same protocol.
An issue that wireless communication systems must deal with is co-channel interference. Co-channel interference occurs when multiple sites are operating on the same physical channel and time slot causing interference. In order to prevent interference between channels, Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) standards allow for frequency hopping and present algorithms for base stations to support frequency hopping. Frequency hopping generally refers to the changing of select parameters in at least one communication signal in a communication channel to avoid interference with another communication signal in the communication channel. Synchronization of when and what parameter to change to between the base station and a remote unit (cell phone, handheld, etc.) is required for frequency hopping to function properly. Therefore, there is a need for radio head interface cards (host cards) located within a server to align with the hopping associated with the remote unit and base station. As a result, a simple and accurate interface between the base station server and host cards is needed in order to stay current with the frequency hopping for each call. However, in current communication systems, when the use of different parameters or frequency hopping is required, an inefficient use of the limited resources occurs.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below that will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for changing the frequencies, bandwidths, and amplitudes that allows for the dynamic relocation of resources in a limited resource system.